Lord of the World is a bitingly satiric science fiction novel of a secularized world state. As Rosa Mulholland, Lady Gilbert, declared, "It is a brilliant, beautiful, and terrible book," a judgment in which the public has fully concurred for nearly a century. Lord of the World is the only one of Benson's novels to remain continually in print from its first publication in 1907 down to the present day.
Robert Hugh Benson (1871-1914) enjoyed a career that lasted little over a decade. In addition to a great many non-fiction works, he authored a series of twenty novels and short story collections that combined a specific moral orientation with an astonishing popularity among the general public of the early twentieth century. As an Anglican and later a Catholic priest, Father Benson was in great demand as a speaker in both England and the United States. The most sensational English convert from the Anglican Communion to Catholicism since John Henry Newman, Benson was a son of the Archbishop of Canterbury. He wrote from a Catholic perspective, but with real understanding and sympathy for the Protestant position.